


constellations

by orphan_account



Series: Attack on Avengers [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Jean is an astronomer, Jean is so fucked up, Jean-that-is is just confused, Jean-that-was was a dick, M/M, Marco's skin is made of stars, The Winter Soldier was a weapon, i hate these boys, jeanmarco i realize it's been seventy years but calm yo libidos, neither of them were even fully conscious for their first kiss, this !verse is pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:50:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1583948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Even with the amnesia, you still remember where all the freckles are."</p>
            </blockquote>





	constellations

Even with the amnesia, you still remember where all the freckles are.

You’d call it muscle memory but your metal hand is the one drawing constellations with the stars on his chest and he shivers and presses more into your mouth and purrs like a cat.

( _Your first kiss you were fourteen and he was wheezing and had these blotches high on his cheeks from the fever and his eyes were shining like diamonds and you were drunk and you panicked about it because it was nineteen thirty and you knew with absolute certainty that there was something fucked up in your head and Marco was so easy to take advantage of you couldn’t do that to him but then he kissed you back and everything was quiet for a while._ )

This, if nothing else, is familiar. This, if nothing else, is _right_.

Until it isn’t.

 _FINISH THE MISSION FINISH THE MISSION FINISHFINISHFINISH_ and then you’re growling and spinning and he’s crumpled against the opposite wall and looking at you like he’s confused and there’s this glimmer of pity and it makes something in your chest ache and some part of your brain you don’t want to acknowledge knows that he’s right to look at you like that.

You crumple, gasping out apologies and stumbling back and sliding down the wall and _no no no no_ you were afraid of this you were so afraid of _exactly_ this and you grab fistfuls of your hair and panic.

You hear him get up, hissing a little, you hurt him. Footsteps across the floor, the creak of hinges ( _you didn’t even shut the front door, it was so good to be back_ ) and then more footsteps and then a hand settles on your back. “DON’T. Don’t touch me, d-don’t _touch_ you can’t I-I-I-” There’s one hand squeezing your heart and another poking holes in your lungs and you grab your chest like that’ll make it stop but it doesn’t.

“Shh. Shh, Jean, it’s okay. I’m here. _You’re_ here. We’re fine.”

“I don’t wanna hurt you I don’t want I don’t and I _can’t_. Marco.” You don’t even know why you tack his name onto all of your sentences, it feels like the more you say it the more real all of this is. You want so much for this to be real. You want it to all be a nightmare. ( _You want to wake up in a drafty apartment with a Marco about six inches shorter and countless pounds lighter and you want to not have been picked for the draft and you want to live your life and work and pay your bills and take care of him._ ) ( _All you’re good for now is hurting him and all it does is hurt you twice as much._ )

His arm wraps around your shoulders, and you feel his head lean into yours. “You won’t hurt me.”

And this awful little bitter laugh escapes you. “I already did.” ( _You were my mission._ ) ( _I’m with you to the end of the line._ )

He shrugs, leans a little more into you. “You didn’t. The Winter Soldier did. Hydra did.”

“I’m still him.” It takes a lot of effort to say. You’re still him. “Seventy years of… all of that… doesn’t go away in six months, Marco.” The Winter Soldier and Sergeant Jean Kirschtein are not the same person. The Winter Soldier is not the angry man Marco remembers, but you’re somewhere in the middle. You’re something new. And you’re getting closer to who he wants you to be, you’re semi-confident of that, but the thing is that you’re still too close to the man who beat Marco half to death and shot him. You’re the guy that was born at _“I’m with you to the end of the line.”_ and baptized in the river you pulled him out of.

There’s a deep breath, absent of the wheeze that is the soundtrack of your memories, and you think _but he’s new too_. “Maybe we should take things slow until you’re more… in control.” The words cost him, wrench their way out of his mouth and you know he doesn’t want that, he wants things to be how they were, but they can’t.

Jean Kirschtein-that-was would’ve protested, would’ve quipped that he didn’t think Marco would hold out on that resolve for more than a few days. The Winter Soldier wouldn’t be in this situation. You nod, knock your head into his gently.

“You need a haircut.” He says, calmly, brushing the tension under the rug. You laugh, a little, and he gets up and finds some scissors.

( _He’s done this a few times over the years, you never took care of yourself when things were bad, it was all he could do to convince you to eat or sleep when he was lucid, basic grooming was not a priority. You were never the priority. You remember one winter, after a particularly bad case of pneumonia and the bones in his wrists had been standing out in sharp relief and his hands had been shaking but the second he decided he was alright he was up and making breakfast and fussing over you and you didn’t have it in you to argue with him when he was smiling at you like that._ )

( _You remember that neither of you were ever good at taking care of yourselves but you took care of each other easier than breathing._ ) ( _Much easier, in Marco’s case. He always said things like that when you said something was easy as breathing, you always rolled your eyes at him and nudged his shoulder and sometimes sprawled across his lap, depending on where you were._ ) ( _You wonder how you ever forgot any of this._ )

You look more like yourself, according to him. You don’t know if that’s accurate, because who you are now doesn’t really look like much of anybody. But you think the haircut of Jean-that-was and the Winter Soldier’s arm is probably close to it.

You trail after him to bed and sleep well for the first time in seventy years.

And then a nightmare about the cold creeps up on you and you wake up gasping and crying and it takes you a minute or two to process that you aren’t in cryo and you aren’t on the bottom of the ravine and Marco is here and Marco is safe and the arm you don’t have anymore aches and he strokes his fingers through your hair and mumbles platitudes that would’ve meant nothing to the Winter Soldier and would’ve been accepted but not believed by Jean-that-was but that mean the world to you.

You trace constellations with your lips and pretend that everything’s okay and try to accept that the center of your universe believes it will be.

Your mind stays quiet as long as he’s touching you, so maybe he’s right.


End file.
